Rant in Defence of Nasty People

For them marriage outside one’s own caste is punishable by death, and too much contact with non-believers is in general polluting, and to be discouraged.  Only men can become chiefs and once they do, they may take several wives.  They believe they are descended only from Adam, not Eve, with her undesirable feminine ways.

If I had been the head of marketing at the murderous terrorist organisation ISIS (an interesting thought experiment…), the above would have featured quite heavily in my recent propaganda.

You see, this is from the Wikipedia description of the Yadizis, the people that ISIS has been genociding in Northern Iraq in recent months and for whom we have all been feeling very sorry as a result.*  Would we have been feeling quite so sorry for them, if we had known that they are not necessarily the nicest people on earth themselves, but have some practices and beliefs that we feminists actually find quite objectionable?

I really hope the answer for everyone is “yes”. 

As I mentioned in my post about LGBT rights some weeks ago, human rights are for everyone, not just nice people.  This is why I don’t get the reaction of the islamophobic trolls that fill the comments sections of any news involving Muslims, for example.  They think that if only they educated me about the fact that women are discriminated against by their menfolk in the Gaza strip, I would – as a feminist – accept the Israeli bombing of them.  How silly.  I’m well aware of some problematic aspects of Islam, and I’m happy to have a conversation about anyone on the Gaza strip about them, but PLEASE STOP BOMBING THEM FIRST.  I am also happy to have this conversation with any Muslim in Finland or Switzerland, but PLEASE STOP DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM FIRST. 

In short, someone not being herself or himself an angel is no reason not to grant her or him the same rights as everyone else.  And I should not have to pretend that they are an angel in order to convince everyone that their rights merit protection.

This hit me quite hard last week, when I received some torture campaign material from Amnesty.  Torture is wrong; I hope all of us agree.  So why do they have to only include nice people among their list of examples of torture victims?  One is described as a father and a husband, another as a prisoner of consciousness.  Who cares?  They should not be tortured whether they are saints or terrorists.

As the well-known saying goes: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”**  That should hold true for every right, and for every person.***

 

*Although not doing much else than feeling sorry but that is another story.

**Often misattributed to Voltaire, but actually the phrase is apparently from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, his biographer.  A woman’s wise words being attributed incorrectly to a man, how surprising.

***Well, maybe not quite the death part, but you get the general sentiment.